ISLAMABAD (AFP) – Turkish President Abdullah Gul is to visit Pakistan at the weekend, becoming the first foreign leader to do so since the declaration of emergency rule, the Foreign Ministry said yesterday. Gul will hold talks with his Pakistani counterpart Pervez Musharraf during the state visit on Sunday and Monday, Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Sadiq told a weekly briefing. The visit is the first by any foreign leader since Pakistan was cast into international isolation by Musharraf’s imposition of a state of emergency on November 3. “The visit has nothing to do with the emergency issue,” Sadiq said. The spokesman said Gul’s visit would focus on “issues of bilateral, regional and global importance.” “The fact that President Abdullah Gul is visiting Pakistan within a few weeks of assuming office reflects the sense of deep-rooted friendship and solidarity between the two countries,” Sadiq said.

ZAGREB (AFP) – Croatian President Stipe Mesic will ask a party leader to form a new government after December 11 following talks with rival parties trying to put together a viable government coalition, he said yesterday. In legislative elections on Sunday, the ruling Croatian Democratic Union won 66 seats, while the opposition Social Democrats were 10 behind, leaving them scrambling for coalition partners for a parliamentary majority of at least 77. “We know who the relative winner is but we still have no proof of who will form the government, which we will know after consultations and after I receive the official results,” Mesic said as quoted by HINA news agency. Electoral authorities are expected to confirm the official results on December 11, after polls are repeated at three polling stations due to minor irregularities.

Serbia’s war crimes prosecutor said yesterday that despite an intense search for Europe’s most wanted war crimes fugitives, Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic, their whereabouts remain a mystery. “We don’t have new evidence about Mladic’s whereabouts, and when we get it we’ll arrest him and send him to the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague,” Vladimir Vukcevic, who heads a state team in charge of the hunt for the Bosnian Serb war crimes suspects, told The Associated Press in an interview. He also said that Serbia’s security services have recently discovered “surprising” evidence that Karadzic was in Serbia as recently as “around 2004.” (AP)

A pack of stray dogs mauled a British woman to death in a Bulgarian village, police said yesterday. Margaret Ann Gordon, 56, was walking her pet dog when the pack of about eight wild dogs attacked her on Tuesday afternoon outside the village of Nedyalsko in southeastern Bulgaria, a police spokeswoman said. Gordon, who lived in Nedyalsko with her partner for the past two years, died from blood loss before an ambulance arrived. (Reuters)